The name tells the story. Industrial Excess—the waste that industrial capitalism generates faster than it can properly dispose of. The landfill was licensed for non-hazardous waste, but that’s not what it accepted. For years, operators took money to bury hazardous materials in violation of permit restrictions: solvents, heavy metals, chemicals that should have gone to proper treatment facilities.

This was the business model: obtain a permit for regular industrial waste, then accept hazardous materials that paid higher disposal fees. By the time regulators caught up, the contamination had already spread—leaching through soil into groundwater, migrating beyond the facility boundaries into the surrounding Stark County landscape.

Masumi photographed the landfill in 1990 as part of her systematic survey of northeastern Ohio’s toxic geography. The site exemplified a pattern repeated across the region: regulatory gaps exploited by operators seeking profit, rural communities transformed into sacrifice zones, cleanup costs ultimately borne by taxpayers rather than polluters.

Her photograph documents the scale of industrial waste disposal—not spectacular industrial architecture, but the mundane infrastructure of contamination. A bounded site radiating poison in all directions, violating both its permits and its visual boundaries. The hidden cost of cheap manufacturing, finally made visible.